With 26 days left on the job, President Owen Rocchi, Vice-President (University Affairs) Ruth Osunde, and Vice-President (Operations) Ayan Chowdhury sat down with The Journal to reflect on their year.
Although they weren’t the executive team to lead the AMS back into the JDUC, Team OAR shared their highlights, challenges, and key take aways. Proud of all they’ve accomplished, the firstever de-slated team is ready to pass on their insights and experiences to their successors.
JDUC revitalization
Rocchi was promised a term in the JDUC, but is ending his tenure on the outside looking in. He cited the AMS remaining without a move-in date to ongoing delays and inconsistent communication from project stakeholders.
“It’s been a hard year,” Rocchi said. “With such inconsistent information and such late changes in information, we can’t even try to communicate any of that [information about moving] to our members.”
READ MORE: AMS and SGPS voice frustration over JDUC delays
Rocchi clarified the delays aren’t solely the University’s responsibility, but stem from a complicated chain of communication among multiple stakeholders, including the JDUC Steering Committee that oversees the entirety of the project.
“A lot of the delays don’t come from Queen’s themselves,” Rocchi explained. “It’s very difficult because there’s a lot of middlemen. It’s people telling people to tell people. So, I don’t even think there’s any bad actors here. It’s just a bad system.”
A Jan. 14 joint statement from the AMS and the Society of Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS) announced they would stop providing tentative move-in dates to avoid raising false expectations. With every delay, it became harder on the team to justify giving more dates to the student body just for it to be altered again.
As the AMS prepares to transition leadership to a new executive team, Rocchi advised the incoming President, Jana Amer, HealthSci ’26, to be transparent and adaptable.
“The biggest takeaway is to be adaptable with whatever comes our way, whether that’s with the building, with teams,” Rocchi said. “These are such crazy roles, just take it in stride.”
For Chowdhury, the Queen’s Pub (QP) was the most anticipated project and one that took the most time. While the QP didn’t open this year due to the ongoing construction, an incoming head manager has already been hired for the 2025-26 year.
“Like any AMS employees, the incoming QP team is expected to undergo a thorough orientation to the AMS, preparing them for their term beginning May 1. The QP management team monitors the daily progress of the JDUC project and anxiously looks ahead to a grand opening date we can share,” Chowdhury said.
Student experience and leadership
Reflecting on the role of leadership within the AMS, Team OAR emphasized inclusivity and collaboration.
They highlighted one of their major successes this year as strengthening collaboration among student leaders and introducing Assembly themes, including Truth and Reconciliation in September, Black History and Futures Month in February, and Women’s History Month in March.
“In an effort to engage with and amplify voices of equity-deserving students on-campus, and proactively build a stronger relationship, each Assembly was dedicated in recognition of a different equity-deserving group on-campus,” Team OAR elaborated in a later statement to The Journal.
READ MORE: AMS discusses trademark issues and Society restructuring at February Assembly
Osunde discussed the shift in her portfolios, noting she no longer sits on the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) Steering Committee, due to the long travel times to Toronto. While the Commissioner of External Affairs remains on the committee, Osunde emphasized her role is now more focused and efficient in managing her direct portfolios.
“My portfolio, I don’t think, has looked this different in recent years. My role no longer sits on the Steering Committee at OUSA because it just isn’t sustainable for me to be back and forth all the time,” Osunde said in an interview with The Journal.
In addition to leaving her role on the Steering Committee, the restructuring of the Social Issues, Campus Affairs, and Clubs Commissions under the Vice-President (University Affairs) portfolio was implemented to improve the efficiency of the organization.
READ MORE: AMS moves to restructure University Affairs portfolio ahead of next year
Looking ahead, the team hopes future student leaders will build on this year’s progress and use their learned lessons as tools during their term.
Working culture of the AMS
OAR described AMS’s internal working culture as highly collaborative and team driven.
Osunde highlighted there are a multitude of reasons people leave their roles at the AMS behind, ones that the team was unable to elaborate on due to HR concerns.
READ MORE: Five AMS employees resign over the course of the year
“The first thing I’ll say is that we don’t hire with the intent to see people leave. I think when we hire our teams, we expect that everyone will see it through the year, and there are a multitude of reasons why people might not end up ending the year with us, and those are all reasonable reasons,” Osunde said.
The team highlighted the importance of permanent staff in maintaining operational continuity during transitions While turnover can affect short-term operations, OAR emphasized permanent staff ensure the organization’s infrastructure remains intact, minimizing disruption to student support services.
Tags
AMS, AMS year in review, JDUC, Team OAR
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